Worth a Shot
by The One and Only Birdie
Summary: So a blonde and a redhead meet in a bar, locking horns in a torrent of wit. But the joke turns out to be on them. Hwoarang x Nina, OneShot


**Worth a Shot**

Defeat. Such a disgusting word. Anything that rhymes with "feet" seemed to carry with it the foul stench of unwashed gym socks after a week of use. And it was all the more sickening to know she had given it her best shot, but found herself the one lying on her back on the ground.

"Well, it's the woman of the hour!"

Nina would have ducked her head, disappeared into the crowd at the bar. It would have been simple; everyone was watching her. Watching her glorious failure play on national television. So engrossed were they in the excitement of watching a blonde Femme Fatale fall in a fetal position, they wouldn't have noticed if she walked in naked - and people always noticed her when she was naked - if it hadn't been for Hwoarang's hearty greeting.

His smirk carried far more ire than Craig Marduk's fist ever could.

"Shut up and drink yourself to death." Nina slapped yen on the counter, and the bartender went for her daily wine. Her seat perched farthest from the TV, a cozy bubble of empty seats around it. Her, her wine, and solace from her failure was all she wanted.

An alarm sounded in her head when Hwoarang broke her bubble, his red-headed ego not yet satisfied. "Worth a shot, first one's on me." Tossing his eyes towards the barkeep, he added "Whatever you gave me."

"Eighty-proof?" The bartender asked incredulously.

"Eighty? Can't be eighty, I'm not having visions of the second coming yet." With that, he bottoms-upped another shot-glass full.

Curling her fingers around the glass with a nod to the bartender, she hid a smile. "Eighty-proof with Vodka is my milk and cookies, thanks fire crotch."

"Don't you read 'Better Homes and Gardens'? Carpets rarely match the drapes." He inspected the bottle of wine the bartender had given Nina.

"The only white picket fence I'll have anything to do with is the one I'll stab you in the eye with."

Hwoarang laughed. Why? She could never guess why he did anything. Why did he badger her every tournament? Why wasn't he persuaded by death threats? Why did he think tight pants made him look attractive? And yet, there he was, in tight pants, badgering her and completely impervious to death threats. "Someone's in a pearl of a mood." He set down her wine bottle in front of her. "Must be eighty-proof if you think you're having visions of the future."

Every year it became worse and worse, and every year she disavowed the sorts of idiocy that were unraveling the corners of her life thread by thread by thread.

Nina rolled her eyes. If there was universal body language for 'leave me alone,' rolling eyes would have to be it. Unfortunately, Hwoarang didn't speak body language. At least, it would seem, if his clothes were on.

"No shame in losing to Craig Marduk. He's about four times your body mass." Four times? Craig Marduk would have to change his name to Jenny Craig and give up all his body hair to hope to be only four hundred pounds. That seven foot behemoth could give King Kong a run for his money. Hwoarang, however, had already presumptuously popped the cork and helped himself to a cup of her wine. "First time I met him, I thought he was a hairy vending machine. I hear his fart releases enough carbon emissions to melt an iceburg." Hwoarang swirled his glass, classic James Bond style, before adding "this is the stuff we discuss in the men's locker room."

"I'm glad to hear you're all environmentally conscious." Al Gore couldn't compare to the philanthropic environmentalism of the King of the Iron Fist male contestants.

"Another shot," Hwoarang called to the bartender. Raising an eyebrow, the bartender began to prepare two shot-glasses, one for Nina and one for Hwoarang, through he investigated the latter very closely.

Nina couldn't resist a smile. Well, she wasn't the type to say no to a free shot. "I'm a much better shot than you, pretty boy." Tossing her shoulder so the fabric of her clothes tumbled away from her holster, she draped her lean fingers over the hilt of her pistol.

If there was a crook with a perfect crooked smile, it was Hwoarang. And his smile was unimpressed. "Not with these guns." Curving his arm, he popped up an impressive bicep.

His joke was pathetic, but his smirk was devastating. Nina turned her attention to her drink. "You should know better than to insult me. I'm in the business of reminding people how brief their existence is." She smiled as the bartender pushed two shot glasses over. Tapping her glass to his, she tipped it back, bottoms up.

Hwoarang set his glass next to the other skeletons of shot drinks past that he was collecting on the table in front of him. The corner of his eye darted up to the screen as a loud whoop was made and television Nina slammed into a wall. Nina's expression betrayed nothing, but she turned her attention towards her Chardonnay instead of the screen.

"What's the big deal in losing, anyway? Aren't you here on work?" Hwoarang hadn't taken his eyes off of the screen, but his question had an oddly calculating feel to it. He was picking his words carefully. Rare for someone three shots and a glass of wine into an evening.

Nina rapped her long nails against the side of her bottle. "No," she admitted finally. "Play."

Hwoarang turned to face her, raising an eyebrow. That must be his favorite expression. "Play? Doesn't sound like you."

Her fingers around the bottle's neck, she tipped back and allowed herself to taste the red wine, all the while aware of her involuntary companion's eyes on her. Setting it down, she settled for cold but vague honesty. "I vowed to come, fight and defeat my sister here."

"And here I thought play meant croquet." There was that crooked smile again. Another fond asymmetrical cliché of his.

"I've been in every tournament since the very beginning, and each time I've lost." Statistical fact. One they were playing on the TV just now, as a matter of fact. To be fair, she had never played to finish first; she played to finish off someone else. Still, it was a semi-constant slap in the face that each and every time she laid her finger on the tournament-

"Well, at least you get the excitement and intrigue of a riveting career to make up for your sad attempts at hobbies," Hwoarang interrupted.

He knew? Of course he knew. How had she been compromised? What worth was an assassin if people knew to look for your face in a crowd? She felt her face flush, an unfortunate chemical impulse that she hadn't entirely beat out of her reflex system. Dropping her head, she was hit with a second wash of unwelcome emotion.

She wasn't the least bit bothered by the fact that he knew.

"I'm a veteran. Fought for and served for the advancement of my country," Hwoarang said out of the blue.

Nina vaguely remembered him mentioning something about the South Korean military during a similar conversation the last tournament. Tossing a chiding look at him, she asked "how long did it take for the South Korean Army to find you after you went AWOL?"

"Few months, the bastards," Hwoarang muttered.

Nina laughed, her voice slightly patronizing. "And you went with them."

"Ultimatum." Hwoarang swiveled on his chair and faced her completely. His brown eyes met her blue ones steadily. "Death, or not death and freedom. Plus, I get some pretty sweet war stories."

Nina paused, turning her chair around and leaning closer to him. "Such as?"

"One time? I shot a guy." An anticlimax waiting to happen, Nina should have known. "And it happened again. It happened nearly five hundred times." He held up five fingers as if to make his point.

"An exaggeration," Nina challenged, tucking a bang behind her ear.

"Made possible by automatic attack rifles." With a jaunty half-smile, he leaned back to help himself to a little more of her wine. Nina rolled her eyes once more. When she thought about it, she realized she overestimated the clarity of a good eye roll; this one meant the opposite of before.

How quickly the table turns when the table is a bar counter.

"You know what?" Hwoarang removed his riding glasses, dropping them around his neck. His red hair tumbled briefly into his face. It couldn't feasibly be his natural color, she mused, his eyebrows were a dead giveaway. Still, it suited him. "All things considered, we aren't so different."

A five foot three, blonde female assassin from Ireland sitting across from a nearly six foot, redheaded male vigilante. By a drunk man's logic, they may as well have been twins. "How so." Humoring him couldn't hurt, she thought as she rested her elbow on the bar and her hand on the back of her neck.

"We're not do-gooders. We're not Satan himself either. We're just…" he paused, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his thighs, his eyes searching for the proper words. "Normal ass-holes."

Nina had to laugh aloud at that one._ Normal_. Now _that_ was a new one. She had been called a lot of things over the course of her twenty-seven years, and for as long as she could remember, normal hadn't been one of them. Not when they knew about her "stimulating career."

Hwoarang laughed at her silence. Pushing away his glasses, he glanced over at the crowd that was just revving up by the TV. It would seem someone had insulted someone else's mother – though Hwoarang wasn't even aware Steve _had_ a mother – and things were getting ugly. Hwoarang figured he must be sick. He genuinely wasn't interested. Casting a side-long look at Nina, he tossed his hair. "Well, I have to go. Friday nights don't waste themselves away."

Nina recognized that look. Begging the question that she may as well ask. "Anything interesting?"

"I was thinking Jello pudding and Guitar Hero." He flipped out his phone, checking the time for a moment. Eyes darting back up through the curtain of his hair, he caught her staring. "Unless you can think of something better."

Every year it became worse and worse. The TV testified to that, flashing through her failures past so everyone tuned into ESPN could know exactly what defeat looked like. But the sweet smell of wine had fermented the stench of defeat. And the promise of something better was enough.

"Worth a shot." Nina slid off of the bar stool, but the moment her feet hit the floor she felt her mind swoon and she braced herself on anything solid. The moment passed, her feet felt firm on the floor, and when she looked up, she realized she had both her hands on Hwoarang's shoulders.

Hwoarang took her hands in his as he effortlessly slid off the chair. He half-smiled, his eyebrow cocked and his hand finding her shoulder. "I'm a better shot than you."


End file.
